What Rishi Sunak's candidacy tells about the British society
Premium- Indian mass media may be proud of Sunak’s Indian connection, but leaders of Britain will treat India in the manner that best serves British interests
Rishi Sunak emerged the favourite among Conservative Members of Parliament to be the next Prime Minister of Britain, after the incumbent Boris Johnson was forced to announce his resignation after one scandal too many. He is vying with Liz Truss, another one of Boris Johnson’s ministers, for the support of the Conservative Party membership, to become party leader and, therefore, prime minister. The result of the contest would be known on September 5. Polling among Conservative party members indicates that Sunak will come in behind Truss.
But the fact that Sunak, the grandson of Hindu immigrants from Kenya, is in serious contention to become leader of Britain is testimony to the increasingly multicultural nature of societies around the world and, correspondingly, to the datedness of xenophobic notions of otherness. His spouse is also of Indian origin: Akshata Murty, daughter of Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy. Sunak met Murty at Stanford, while doing his MBA as a Fulbright scholar.
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Sunak was not the only contender for the PM’s post with a non-European immigrant identity. Suella Braverman, who lost out in an early round of voting among Conservative MPs, also has parents of Indian origin, who, too, had migrated to Britain from East Africa. Kemi Badenoch, another contender, is of Nigerian origin. Another candidate, Nadhim Zahawi, who took over from Rishi Sunak after the latter quit as Chancellor of the Exchequer, triggering a series of resignations from Boris Johnson’s ministry, is a British-Iraqi politician. Rehman Chishti and Sajid Javed bowed out of the race before the voting began.
It is worth recalling that the Mayor of London is Sadiq Khan, born to immigrants from Pakistan, whose parents, in turn, had migrated from Uttar Pradesh. Sadiq Khan is a popular Labour politician.
The foreign-born proportion in Britain’s population of 68.86 million is 14.5%, and they hail from 22 foreign countries. But this does not fully reflect the immigrant complexion of British society, as this number does not take into account those born to immigrants in Britain. Xenophobes of the God-fearing variety might see this profusion of originally alien ethnicities in Britain as the wages of the past sin of annexing colonies around the world. But the prolific presence of the foreign-born and their offspring, in not just the professions but also in Parliament and elected high office, shows that Britons, by and large, see an efflorescence, rather than a blight, in this non-white ethnic presence in their midst.
Tony Blair, British prime minister from 1997 to 2007, had been an ardent advocate of multiculturalism–until Islamic radicals carried out a series of bomb blasts in different parts of England. Thereafter, the tide turned in favour of a collective Britishness, whatever that was, championed by Blair’s successor Gordon Brown, and by David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister who took over the reins from Gordon Brown. Cameron had a fair number of leaders of immigrant origin in his council of ministers.
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This might seem at odds with the British vote to leave the European Union in 2016, largely attributed to the dislike among the older, more conservative voters towards hordes of migrant workers from EU countries periodically descending on their neighbourhood. An explanation might be that those who settle down in Britain, develop roots and assimilate are seen differently from those who come and go, speaking in foreign languages or with thick accents when speaking in English.
There is a tendency for Indian mass media to play up Sunak’s Indian connection. But leaders of Britain will treat India in the manner that best serves British interests, regardless of whether Indians see them as their son-in-law or not (if Akshata is India’s daughter, what else can Rishi be?). Whether he wins or loses, Sunak’s prime-ministerial race sets Britain right up at the forefront of the global march towards transformed societies in which people are judged by the content of their character and not by the colour of their skin.
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